Peter Sutcliffe, "The Yorkshire Ripper" Peter Sutcliffe Peter Sutcliffe, "The Yorkshire Ripper" Peter William Sutcliffe (born 2 June 1946) is a British serial killer who was dubbed “The Yorkshire Ripper”. In 1981 Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attacking seven others. He is currently serving 20 sentences of life imprisonment in Broadmoor Hospital. After his conviction, Peter Sutcliffe began using his mother’s maiden name and became known as Peter William Coonan. A High Court ruling rejected an appeal in 2010, confirming that he would serve a whole life tariff and would never be released from imprisonment. Peter Sutcliffe was born in Bingley, to a working-class Catholic family in West Riding of Yorkshire, a son of John Sutcliffe (11 December 1922 – June 2004) and Kathleen Frances Sutcliffe (née Coonan, 22 January 1919 – 1978).

Reportedly a loner at school, he left at the age of 15 and took a series of menial jobs, including two stints as a gravedigger during the 1960s. Between November 1971 and April 1973 Sutcliffe worked at the factory of Baird Television Ltd, on the packaging line. He left when he was asked to go on the road as a salesman. After leaving Baird, he worked nightshifts at the Britannia Works of Anderton International from April 1973. In February 1975 he took redundancy, used the pay-off to gain an HGV licence on 4 June 1975 and began working as a driver for a tyre firm on 29 September of that year. On 5 March 1976 he was dismissed for the theft of used tyres. He was unemployed until October 1976, when he found another job as an HGV driver for T & WH Clark (Holdings Ltd.) on the Canal Road Industrial Estate in Bradford.

Sutcliffe frequently used prostitutes as a young man and it has been speculated that a bad experience with one during which he was believed to have been conned out of money, helped fuel his violent hatred of women. He first met Sonia Szurma on 14 February 1967; they married on 10 August 1974. His wife suffered several miscarriages over the following few years and the couple were subsequently informed that she would not be able to have children. Shortly after this, she resumed a teacher training course. When she completed the course in 1977 and began teaching, the couple used the salary from her job to buy their first house in Heaton , Bradford, where they moved on 26 September 1977, and where they were still living at the time of Sutcliffe’s arrest. Peter Sutcliffe – Murder victims rss / 2 Comments Peter William Sutcliffe (born 2 June 1946) is a British serial killer known as “The Yorkshire Ripper”. In 1981 Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven others. Sutcliffe was a regular user of prostitutes in Leeds and Bradford.

His obsession with killing streetwalkers seems to have originated with an argument over payment, but he claimed he was being guided by the voice of God. He carried out the murders over a five-year period, during which the public were especially shocked by the murders of some pedestrians who were not prostitutes. When arrested in January 1981 for driving with false number-plates, police questioned him about the killings and he confessed that he was the perpetrator. At his trial, he pleaded not guilty to murder on grounds of diminished responsibility as he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, but his defence was rejected by the jury. He is serving 20 sentences of life imprisonment in Broadmoor High Security Hospital. After his conviction, Sutcliffe began using his mother’s maiden name and became known as Peter William Coonan. West Yorkshire Police were criticised for their slowness in apprehending Sutcliffe, despite interviewing him nine times during the murder hunt. Owing to the sensational nature of the case, they were having to handle an exceptional volume of information, some of it vexatious, including a major distraction caused by a hoax phone-call purporting to be from the ‘Ripper’.

Nevertheless, serious criticism was confirmed in the 2006 Byford Report of the official enquiry. The High Court dismissed an appeal by Sutcliffe in 2010, confirming that he would serve a whole life tariff and would never be released from prison. Related Documentaries One man's obsession with 'real' Ripper - Yorkshire Post One man's obsession with 'real' Ripper 09:48 Wednesday 31 August 2005 Was there a second Yorkshire Ripper? Chris Benfield meets a man who has been saying for 20 years that the wrong man went to prison. Noel O'Gara hits town like the Inquisition. The Yorkshire police are corrupt, the entire English legal system is corrupt and my Editor and I have let them get away with it. One day our readers will rise up in righteous wrath and string us up. O'Gara lays his book on the table and sits back to sip fruit juice, while two of his lieutenants bark questions. Have you read this book? What have you done about it? Demurral is not an option.

The idea that Peter Sutcliffe was caught, rightly convicted and jailed for the series of murders that horrified the nation is simply not good enough. "If you have read this and you are not convinced, there is something seriously wrong with you," says Patrick Cullinane, a fierce Irishman who describes himself as a professional case worker on miscarriages of justice. There are pitfalls everywhere for the heretic. Tell O'Gara he has an interesting theory and he erupts in exasperation. His book is not a theory, it is the truth. To his followers, his impatience is understandable. His book is called The Real Yorkshire Ripper and he has lived in some fear of the man he names in it for the past 26 years. That man, as far as anyone knows, is still free. The story goes back to the tail end of 1979, when the hunt for the Ripper was still on. At his home in Athlone, 60 miles inland from Dublin, O'Gara picked up an English newspaper and was hit by a thunderbolt.

Reading about the murders and the clues, O'Gara was suddenly sure he knew who was responsible – a plausible rogue with great strength, a voracious sexual appetite, a dangerous temper, a prison record, a deep hatred of the police and a history of to-ing and fro-ing within England. O'Gara had employed him and become friendly with him while working on a house he was turning into a hotel. He cooled the relationship, he says, when he came to realise his new friend was dangerous. But he continued to meet him, and record some of his fluently obscene "crack" about sex and violence. O'Gara has named him many times but it should be said now that there is not a shred of evidence against the man. It was back in 1979 when O'Gara, a successful property dealer, made the first of a number of trips to England to pass on the beginnings of his dossier on his suspect. In January 1981, West Yorkshire Police arrested Peter Sutcliffe. Soon after that, they did travel to Ireland to interview O'Gara's suspect, but went away again, leaving O'Gara extremely nervous.

Eventually, his former friend went missing, to avoid a sentence imposed over a fight in Ireland. O'Gara believes he is still alive – probably in England – and keeps a log of unsolved murders he thinks the man should be questioned about. His life was taken over by his mission to prove that Sutcliffe was a diversion – a copycat killer, weaker and less clever than the original Ripper. O'Gara is 61 this year. But last week, he was back in Leeds, to picket in the rain outside the court where Sutcliffe's old solicitor, Kerry Macgill, was sitting as a judge, and to leaflet outside the offices of the Yorkshire Post and the Bradford Telegraph & Argus, accusing us all of having blood on our hands, through conspiracy or negligence. O'Gara followed Sutcliffe's trial and pointed out, to anyone who would listen, that the Bradford lorry driver did not fit the profile the police had built up. The police admitted they had been led up a blind alley by the infamous letters and audiotape from "Geordie Jack" – who seemed to know unpublished information about the murders.

There were traces of B-type blood in the saliva which moistened the gum on the envelopes and a so-called "B secretor" had bitten Joan Harrison, a down-and-out who was murdered in Preston in 1975. Until Sutcliffe was arrested, she was officially a Ripper victim. But Sutcliffe was not a B-secretor. After catching him, the police decided Harrison was a red herring and Geordie Jack was just a clever hoaxer. O'Gara was not the only amateur sleuth left unsatisfied. They traced back the links which had been made between one murder and another, through bite marks and boot-prints and rituals, and said it did not all add up. And surely there must have been semen on other bodies which tied in with the B-secretor theory? George Oldfield, the police officer in charge of the case, once appeared to confirm that this was so.O'Gara claims to know, from police sources, that a blood group incompatible with some of the clues was one reason Sutcliffe was eliminated from police inquiries on a number of occasions. His most significant support on this has come from Ron Warren, a former member of West Riding County Council, now 85.

He was deputy chairman of the West Yorkshire Police Authority when Sutcliffe was arrested. Last week, he told the Yorkshire Post what he told O'Gara 10 years ago: "There were definitely two murderers involved in the 13" – referring to the killings Sutcliffe was convicted for. "It was well-known in the operations room that there had to be two, because of the blood evidence. I don't know how it was all reconciled, but I do believe Sutcliffe was found guilty of more murders than he could possibly have committed. It was a very inefficient inquiry, there were things that were difficult to explain away, and I suppose the police were more interested in getting it all wrapped up than in getting at the whole truth." But Michael Bilton, author of Wicked Beyond Belief, one of the most authoritative of the Ripper books, says: "I spent four years going through everything the police had and I am not aware of any forensic evidence which excluded Sutcliffe from any of the murders he was convicted for." After the trial, O'Gara was left going over and over his dossier on his suspect and his collection of newspaper cuttings and working out how the two might link up.

By 1985, he had a manuscript which wove all the known facts about the killings into an elaborate theory about how an Irish-based Ripper had second-guessed and manipulated his copycat in Yorkshire. It is a strange book – almost admiring about the colourful thug it portrays – but a compelling one, as acknowledged by the great crime writer Colin Wilson. I was a freelance journalist at the time and was introduced to O'Gara by a Fleet Street contact who had uneasily brushed him off. I got a commission to write a detailed memo on the story, but no editor wanted to suggest that West Yorkshire Police's greatest triumph was a fit-up. By the time I joined the Yorkshire Post, in 1990, all its senior journalists groaned at the mention of O'Gara. Sutcliffe had confessed, after all, and the killings had stopped. This was, as O'Gara and his supporters point out, before the nation had to apologise to the Birmingham 6, the Guildford 4 and others convicted with the help of "confessions". But then, Sutcliffe has never retracted his.

O'Gara's explanation is that Sutcliffe wanted to be the Ripper, believed he was the Ripper, and had nothing to gain from knocking a few murders off his list. Sutcliffe's father, now dead, told O'Gara he did not believe his son had done them all. But then, he would have, wouldn't he? We would be rightly sceptical if Sutcliffe himself tried to change the record after all this time. To most of us, it still seems impossible that all those police and lawyers and jurors and journalists could have been cunning enough, or daft enough, to let such a big lie go undiscovered for 24 years. But through the internet, it is possible to find plenty of people who think it is quite likely. O'Gara has been given fresh energy and encouragement through his website, and he still has enough money, assisted by a trickle from sales of his book, to take himself and his supporters around the country, to play to the public taste for a rebel, hector journalists and threaten Judge Macgill with a citizen's arrest.

Asked why he does not give up, he asks fiercely: "If you knew who the Ripper was, would you shrug and let him get away?" Utter conviction is difficult to argue with, even if it is probably utterly wrong. Most of the policemen who might have done it effectively are dead. O'Gara seems doomed to wander that no-man's land in which nothing is certain, because nobody can be trusted. But thanks to the internet, at least he has company. n Noel O'Gara's full argument can be found at 1000+ images about the Yorkshire ripper on Pinterest | Peter sutcliffe, Broadmoor hospital and Murders Forward Peter Sutcliffe, a.k.a. “The Yorkshire Ripper,” used a ball-pein hammer to knock out victims before slashing them with a knife. He killed 13 women in England before he was caught in 1981. He claimed God told him to kill prostitutes. He’s serving life in prison. See More No.

1 Suspect | THE REAL YORKSHIRE RIPPER STORY THE REAL YORKSHIRE RIPPER STORY The No1 Suspect Two weeks after Emily Jackson’s murder, her friend Maria Sellars gave the police a description of the man she saw with Emily. He was an Irishman, known as a regular punter in the area. He was aged 30/40. He was of fat build. He had a full beard, unshaped and bushy with bushy eyebrows. His eyes were almost closed. He had a round nose. He had very distinctive burnlike scars. He was tatooed on his arms. He wore 2 large gold rings. His clothes were dusty like a building worker. He was known to other prostitutes in the area. The Stocky Bearded Irishman. At 10.15pm on the 23rd April 1977 Tina Atkinson , who was drunk was propositioned by Billy Tracey outside the Carlisle pub in Lumb Lane Bradford . Tracey had come to a known prostitute haunt to commit another murder. The streets were quiet and people were drunk. It was Saturday night, and the pubs were full.

Tracey walked with her a short distance to her flat where he bludgeoned her when she stepped through the door. Her pimp found the body when she had’nt returned to the job. . The stocky bearded man was noticed with Tina by an eyewittness ,probably her pimp, and he gave a description to the police. Within 2 days Chief Superintendant John Domaille had issued a bulletin to all police stations looking for the well described stocky bearded Irishman. This is a page from David Yallop’s book His identikit photo was published in all the papers but Tracey was back in Ireland and nobody thought to look in Ireland for the Irishman. 2 month later on the 25th June ,again at 10.30pm on Saturday night, Tracey came to Leeds from his home in Ireland. He had picked the place and the time. He was seen hanging around the Hayfield pub in Chapletown Road, a pub frequented by prostitutes and their pimps. However because of their fears of him the girls were working in pairs and their pimps were keeping a sharper eye on them.

He couldn’t get one alone and as it was approaching midnight Tracey , always an opportunist seized his chance when the innocent Jayne MacDonald took a short cut through the Hayfield car park on her way home. He probably asked her for directions and when she turned her head she was struck senseless. He dragged her into the adjacent playground where he got down to the serious business that he had come to do. He then took a taxi to the city centre and another one on to Manchester where he took a pre arranged guest house for the night, before returning to Dublin the next day and home, to be on the job on Monday morning. This time George Oldfield was in charge. Again the stocky bearded man was reported seen in the vicinity . There was no doubt that it was a Ripper murder. Oldfield again redoubled his efforts to trace the stocky bearded Irishman, with the rings tatooes and scars. He later stated that they never traced this man.

HOW THE RIPPER DIVERTED THE POLICE HUNT AWAY FROM IRELAND AND ON TO SUNDERLAND Billy Tracey, the stocky bearded Irishman who was the number one suspect, embarked on a plan to divert the police from the Irish angle by the simple ploy of writing to the policeman who led the hunt for him. Naturally he wouldnt post his letters from his home town Clara in Ireland. He simply posted his letters in Sunderland in the North East of England. He gave them confidential information that would be known only to the Ripper and to the police and that is why they believed the letters were from the Ripper. To ensure that the police would not regard his first letter as a hoax he included the Preston murder in his count by reminding them about it in that way and bringing it into the Ripper frame. This murder was not publicly associated with the growing count of the Rippers murders and only the police and the killer knew the linking factors that he alone had made to his victims and that convinced the police that he was not a hoaxer. They found saliva on the stamp to show that he was the rare one in sixteen B blood group which matched the blood group on semen and saliva found on some of his victims.

His motive was not just to divert them from the Irish angle but also to divert them on to his copycat by including the copycat’s murder of Jean Jordan committed by Peter Sutcliffe, in his count. At that time he didnt know Sutcliffe, but he alone knew that there was a copycat killer out there. In the first two letters he referred to a ‘close call’ in Huddersfield, a fact known only to the police and himself. Also he promised another murder ‘in Manchester again’ and of ‘an older whore’ and he delivered on these promises by killing the 42 year old Vera Millward in Manchester. That precipitated the police decision to include the earlier Manchester murder of Jean Jordan in the official Ripper frame. Once that was reported, he knew that he had the police believing that he was from Sunderland, then his next move was to follow up with a third letter promising to kill again and he did so just a few weeks later. Then he sent a taped cassette message and this time he mimiced a Geordie accent.

That was no problem for Billy Tracey who was a very competent mimic of any accent and he had served twelve years in jails rubbing shoulders with Geordies, Londoners, Scots, Welsh and English prisoners. His mimicing of accents had to be heard to be believed. Slowly the Irish suspect drifted into the background as the focus centered on the North East and the police photofit pictures of Sutcliffe provided by victims of his assaults moved centre stage. The police made the major blunder of believing that the letter writer lived in Sunderland and posted his letters in his own home town. They took him for a fool not suspecting that Sunderland was just a diversionary tactic by a cunning and manipulative evil murderer who was getting at the police. In September 1980 the New Statesman magazine released information about the Ripper’s teeth gap that angered the police. The Irish suspect, in the top left corner can be seen fading into the back of the page. However these facts remain.

The stocky bearded tatooed scarred Irishman had to be somewhere and I was the unfortunate person who had him in my employ in Ireland in 1979 and worse still I chanced to read that Ripper article in the Sunday Telegraph and tumbled to his secret . This revelation set in train a chain of events which are still ongoing. Had I been wrong ,nobody would have been more relieved to be proved wrong. All the evidence that subsequently came to light merely served to demonstrate and prove beyond any shadow of doubt that it was correct. The burden of this knowledge was a great weight and when it became apparent that, like in the Stefan Kiszko case, the Judith Ward case, the Birmingham 6 and numerous other miscarriages of justice, the police would not intervene, I decided to publish the information I had. Terry Hawkshaw from Drighlington, near Bradford became a serious suspect. He was a taxi man and had carried some of these prostitutes in his cab. He fitted the description of the Irish suspect except he was an Englishman. Hawkshaw had a large gap betweenhis top front teeth and he was the rare B secretor blood group. Hawkshaw was the nearest thing to Tracey in Yorkshire.

George Oldfield almost had him convinced that he was the Ripper without himself even knowing it. Fortunately for him he had a solid alibi on the night of Helen Rytka’s murder in Huddersfield and he was eliminated then. When I read the Sunday Telegraph article about the Ripper in November 1979, the article that was to awaken me to Tracey’s secret, I knew nothing of an Irish suspect in 1976 and 1977. Much less did I know that they were looking for an Irishman who resembled Billy Tracey to a tee. Had I known about this Irish suspect I would have been much more positive in my dealings with the police but I let it run and witnessed the way they wound up with Sutcliffe and their performance. After Sutcliffe’s Court case, David Yallop’s book outlined the Irish suspect, which was the first I knew of this matter, eighteen months after I made the breakthrough. This was highly significant confirming evidence. This evidence reinforced my conviction and I knew then that I could put the story together so that an intelligent person could see what happened if they studied the case.

It was an unbelievable and bizarre story but Tracey was just that, an unbelievable and bizarre individual. . Now with hindsight we can compare Tracey with the evidence and look at the statistics of probability. The odds against this happening must surely be millions if not billions to one.Those odds made it all the more difficult to get this story across. This well described Irishman was the last person seen with 2 victims and he was seen at the scene of the McDonald murder. Clearly he had to be traced. Ireland has under 4 million citizens in all. Even if there were 10,000 Irishmen who looked like the bearded man and were stocky or fat and in the age group of 35 to 50 how many of them would be tatooed?, Say 10% and we are down to 1000 tatooed stocky bearded men resembling the photofit. How many of these 10,000 Irishmen would have a long criminal record for violent sex related crime the length and breadth of England, a foreign country? Of the club of 1000 how many of these would have obvious burn like scars on their hands or arms ?

Perhaps 10 but even if it was ten times ten, say 100 we are down to 100 stocky bearded Irishmen resembling the photofit who also have tatooes and burn like scars. Tracey had a large burn like scar on both arms which he sustained whensomeone tried to shoot him in London. They can be seen on the site photo.He also had two more similar scars on his neck which are concealed by the beard and are also bullet wounds. Maria Sellars thought the suspect had scars on his face also. How many of this group would have a large gap in their top front teeth ? Tracey has all these so far. Lets assume we have 10 suspects in the room. How many of these arerecorded aggressive psychopaths in the U.K.? Tracey is. The Ripper was obviously a sex fiend. How many of these suspects are sex maniacs ? Tracey is known as one. How many served 12 years in English maximum security prisons ? How many Irishmen were deported from England 4 times ? I have the evidence that puts this deportee back in the murder area within days of the last Ripper murder. What was his business there ?

How many of these Irishmen would make an unprovoked attack on his own nephewby luring him first to his home and then striking him hard with a hammer on the back of the head before wittnesses restrained him,and this shortly before the arrest of Peter Sutcliffe ? Not many, but Billy Tracey did. How many have the rare B secretor blood group ? Tracey has. How many of these Irish suspects was married to a convicted prostitute with a record in the U.K ? How many of these stocky bearded Irishmen served time in Preston , Durham and Manchester jails ? Tracey did. How many of these Irish suspects have a record of at least 50 different assaults of all kinds on policemen and prison officers in the U.K ? Tracey has. How many send postcards and letters to the police ? I saw him myself sending mail to policemen. . Tracey on holiday. How many Irishmen of any description had written to complain to the West Yorkshire police about an alleged swindle in Leeds at that time,or at any time ever and received a reply and apology from the Chief Constable ? Not many but Billy Tracey did. He enjoyed showing the letter to his acquaintances.

How many admitted themselves into a mental hospital as a contingency plan while Sutcliffe was on remand and before the charges for 13 murders were laid against him ? I could go on and on with more evidence pointing the finger at Tracey. He fits the Ripper frame and it defies all reason that based on his criminal record alone, he was not high on the list of suspects even if he was never described by so many wittnesses. The Ripper’s motive of winding up the police was always known to them but they never admitted this but rather suggested that the Ripper was a man who hated prostitutes. Nothing could be further from the truth. He hated the police intensely and was forever preoccupied with them and feeding them with false information, in Ireland,as well as in England. This was his life. It would be impossible to find another Irishman who had a record like Tracey’s in the UK at that time. It would be impossible for me, the author, to concoct such a litany of telling evidence against any man without inviting a libel action. No libel was ever threatened because the facts outlined were true. The evidence fits the man.

Was there another stocky, fat, tatooed, bearded, scarred sex maniac with a big gap between his top teeth and B blood group Irishman, who had associations with Preston, Manchester and West Yorkshire, alive at that time? A man who also wrote to the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire and who used a hammer on his nephew’s head before going into the mental home voluntarily only days before Peter Sutcliffe was charged with all the Ripper murders but one. A man who was a violent pimp and who was a recorded agressive psychopath in the UK prison system.A well described man seen at the scene of three of the murders and never traced. All these and much more show Billy Tracey as that unique individual who alone fits the frame. With Tracey in the frame everything fits. Nobody else could fit it. It is unique. With Sutcliffe in the frame nothing fits and his conviction was based on his confessions alone ,with a constabulary compromised by their own tactical blunders offering him leniency for these confessions.

Yorkshire Ripper: Peter Sutcliffe could face trial for 'many attacks' on women Yorkshire Ripper: Peter Sutcliffe could face trial for 'many attacks' on women December 6, 2015 14:15 GMT Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper was convicted in 1981 of murder 13 women in the UKGetty Police are investigating claims that Peter Sutcliffe could face future murder charges for a number of killings and violent assaults which were never brought to trial. The evidence comes from previously unpublished papers which are part of a report by Sir Lawrence Byford, a former chief inspector. He believes that Sutcliffe was responsible for numerous other crimes. "It is my firm conclusion that between 1969 and 1980 Sutcliffe was probably responsible for many attacks on unaccompanied women, which he has not yet admitted, not only in the West Yorkshire and Manchester areas but also in other parts of the country," he said according to a Sunday Times report. Maureen Lea is allegedly one of the Yorkshire Ripper's victims. As a 20-year-old student at Leeds University, she was attacked on 25 October 1980.

Two screwdrivers were driven into her spine and she was hit over the head with a hammer, leaving her with a fractured skull and cheekbone. She was saved after being spotted by a passer-by, leading to her assailant running off. Lea gave a TV interview in 2010 in which she described the "sheer terror" of the attack, which happened on the day before her 21st birthday. In another attack which occurred in 1975, Tracy Brown, who was 14 years old at the time, was struck several times with a hammer. She gave a description which closely matched Sutcliffe's appearance. Bungled investigation Keith Hellawell, former chief constable of West Yorkshire police , visited Sutcliffe in prison and the former lorry driver admitted the assault on Brown and also two other attacks. Hellawell reportedly said that the Crown Prosecution Service would not press charges because it was not in the public interest. "We have identified 22 additional murders and eight attempted murders where he is the most likely suspect. These now need to be properly investigated," said Tim Tate, co-author of Yorkshire Ripper: The Secret Murders.

At the time, the police were criticised for their handling of the Ripper investigation. "Disturbingly, the truth has remained hidden thanks to an extraordinary cover-up which has obscured the incompetence of West Yorkshire Police, who missed repeated chances to bring him to justice – Sutcliffe was interviewed and dismissed as a suspect nine times," Tate says in the book which was co-written with Chris Clark, a former policeman. "The force compounded its bungling by resisting attempts of other forces to question Sutcliffe over similar unsolved murders in their areas." More about the Yorkshire Ripper Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe butchered 35 women and one MAN, claims book | Daily Mail Online comments In 1981, Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was convicted of 13 murders and seven attempted murders. Yet even this is not the whole terrible truth In 1981, Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was convicted of 13 murders and seven attempted murders. Yet even this is not the whole terrible truth.

Now, in an explosive new book, former police intelligence officer Chris Clark and investigative journalist Tim Tate reveal the full scope of his evil, which claimed at least 23 more lives and left seven others with terrible injuries. They discovered a disturbing cover-up of police incompetence, and that Sutcliffe attacked men as well as women in 16 years of horror across England – not just Yorkshire and Lancashire. The cover-up has betrayed the forgotten victims – as well as three men who between them wrongly served 77 years in prison for murders he committed. Eve Stratford was discovered face-down on the floor of her East London bedroom at 5.25pm on March 1975. Her hands were tied behind her back with a stocking and a belt and her blue negligee had been ripped open. Her throat had been cut so violently with a large knife that her head was almost severed. The case caused a sensation. Eve was a ‘bunny girl’ hostess at Park Lane’s risqué Playboy Club and had posed nude in Mayfair magazine. Scotland Yard initially worked on the theory that she had either met her killer at work or through her glamour modelling work, but failed to make any arrests.

The case came four months before the attack on Anna Rogulskyj in Keighley, West Yorkshire, and another on Olive Smelt in Halifax a few weeks later – cases which became the first officially recorded attempted murders in the gruesome crime catalogue of Britain’s most vicious and feared serial killer, Peter Sutcliffe. Yet to this day Eve is not considered to be a Ripper victim, even though her murder shows elements of Sutcliffe’s distinctive and gruesome modus operandi (MO). Nor is 16-year-old Lynne Weedon, killed on the other side of London six months later in an attack that had all the hallmarks of the Ripper. This case too remains unsolved. Tellingly, the two crimes have now been linked by modern DNA analysis – further compelling evidence that Eve did indeed belong to a horrific catalogue of killings that far exceed the acknowledged total. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share Lynne Weedon’s murder was completely characteristic. She was attacked from behind as she walked home in Hounslow, West London, on September 3, 1975. Her skull was smashed with one massive blow from a blunt instrument.

Her killer removed her blue jeans, leaving her naked from the waist down; he then began sexually molesting her dying body before being disturbed and dumping her body in the grounds of an electricity substation. The crimes Sutcliffe admitted after being caught in 1981 revealed the unusual way in which he killed – details so unusual it is extraordinarily unlikely that similar crimes could be committed by anyone else. His MO included prior conversation with his victims, the use of hammer (usually with a round head or ‘ball-peen’) from behind, repeated stabbing after death with a knife or screwdriver, partially stripping and moving his victim’s body and posing them in a ‘staged’ crime scene. He sometimes used a knotted roped to strangle victims, and semen was sometimes left at the scene. Eve Stratford was discovered face-down on the floor of her East London bedroom at 5.25pm on March 1975. Her hands were tied behind her back with a stocking and a belt and her blue negligee had been ripped open Lynne’s murder was typical, although her attacker was disturbed before he could complete his grisly tableau, with clothes pulled up to expose the breasts and mutilation to the abdomen and genitals.

Eve Stratford’s killing was more unusual, but, as we will see, there are other cases that featured the near-removal of the victim’s head. Analysis of scores of unsolved murders gathering dust in police files show that the officially accepted history of the Ripper’s crimes – the brutal murder of 13 young women and seven equally horrific attempted murders between 1975 and 1980 – vastly underestimate the true extent of Peter Sutcliffe’s reign of terror. Out of a total of 78 unsolved murders in the 16 years before Sutcliffe was arrested, the killing of no fewer than 22 women bear the unmistakeable imprint of the Yorkshire Ripper, as well as six attacks in which the female victims survived and two attacks on men, one fatal, making a total of 30 unacknowledged Ripper attacks. Disturbingly, the truth has remained hidden thanks to an extraordinary cover-up which has obscured the incompetence of West Yorkshire Police, who missed repeated chances to bring him to justice; Sutcliffe was interviewed and dismissed as a suspect nine times.

The force compounded its bungling by resisting attempts of other forces to question Sutcliffe over similar unsolved murders in their areas. They even failed to properly reinvestigate cold cases on their own patch. Sutcliffe commonly used a hammer (usually with a round head or ‘ball-peen’) from behind, repeatedly stabbed his victims after death with a knife or screwdriver, partially stripped and moved his victim’s body and posed them in 'staged’ crime scenes Yet analysis of these unsolved cases show that Sutcliffe started his killing spree in 1966, almost a decade before the officially accepted version of events. Furthermore, his crimes were not confined to prostitutes, nor did he restrict himself to Yorkshire and the North. In fact, Sutcliffe, a lorry driver, killed in London, Essex, Staffordshire, Derbyshire and the Midlands. Worse still, as a result of the police’s obduracy, three innocent men would rot for decades behind bars, wrongly convicted of crimes almost certainly committed by the Yorkshire Ripper.

One of them, Stephen Downing, became a cause celebre after The Mail on Sunday campaigned for the quashing of his conviction after he had protested his innocence for 27 years, a stance which made him ineligible for parole (see the panel below.) Two other men, Anthony Steel and Andrew Evans, served 25 years each for crimes that show the hallmarks of the Ripper: the murders of Carol Wilkinson in Bradford in 1977, and Judith Roberts in Tamworth, Staffordshire, in 1972. The police’s chaotic and ineffective hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper was doomed by three fatal misconceptions – that he attacked only prostitutes, that a hoaxer with a Sunderland accent was the culprit, and that he only attacked in Manchester and Yorkshire Both, like Downing, were vulnerable because of learning difficulties or mental problems. All unjustly spent the best years of their adult lives behind bars. The police’s chaotic and ineffective hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper was doomed by three fatal misconceptions – that he attacked only prostitutes, that a hoaxer with a Sunderland accent was the culprit, and that he only attacked in Manchester and Yorkshire.

But if they had widened their search to cover all attacks with a similar, incredibly rare, method, they would have discovered detailed descriptions that would have firmly pointed the finger at Sutcliffe, and surely have saved the lives of a least a dozen women. Detailed analysis of the unsolved case files – one was carried out by police after Sutcliffe’s prosecution, but never acted upon – shows not only that his first attacks were on men, but that he operated across a wide swathe of England, and carried out many more crimes in his native Yorkshire. The first missed case came on April 22, 1966 – almost a decade before the Ripper’s first official attack – when Bingley bookmaker Fred Craven was smashed on the back of the head with a blunt instrument. Robbers made off with £200, leaving Mr Craven dead in a pool of blood. Detectives soon had descriptions of two suspects: one was described as no more than 20, slim, 5ft 5in and dressed in a dark jacket, light trousers and a denim ‘Donovan’ cap – as worn by the Scottish singer popular at the time.

Sutcliffe was then just weeks short of his 20th birthday. Within two days, police arrested Michael Sutcliffe, Peter’s 16-year-old brother, who was known to wear a Donovan cap, but he had an alibi. They failed to realise that Peter Sutcliffe fitted the description better. DID SUTCLIFFE MURDER THE BAKEWELL TART? The 1973 murder of the unhappily-married Wendy Sewell in a Derbyshire graveyard became infamous as the ‘Bakewell Tart’ case. Stephen Downing, a 17-year-old cemetery groundsman with learning difficulties, was questioned for hours by police without a solicitor present, and told he wouldn’t be allowed to sleep until he signed a confession they had prepared, which he did. He later retracted the statement, but was convicted of her murder and served 27 years behind bars while maintaining his innocence in the longest miscarriage of justice in Britain. He was told he would never be eligible for parole until he acknowledged his guilt. His case was championed by The Mail on Sunday, and Downing was freed by the Court of Appeal in 2002 after his conviction was ruled unsafe.

Derbyshire Police reinvestigated the case, but subsequently said there were no other suspects, shamefully implying that Downing was guilty all along. But a long-suppressed post-mortem report, released after a Freedom of Information request and never seen by the court, showed Wendy had been garotted with a knotted ligature, battered from behind, stripped and brutally kicked – all hallmarks of the Ripper. She had also been heard speaking to a man with a high-pitched voice on the phone before leaving the office. Sutcliffe has a high-pitched voice. Victim: Wendy Sewell and her husband David on their wedding day, before she was murdered in 1973 He also owned such a cap and had repeatedly pestered Mr Craven’s daughter to go out with him. The case remains unsolved. Almost a year later, on March 22, 1967, bespectacled taxi driver John Tomey picked up a fare in Leeds city centre. His passenger was in his early 20s, local, with dark hair, a moustache and beard. On a deserted stretch of road, the passenger smashed a ball-peen hammer several times into the back of Mr Tomey’s skull.

As he came to, he got a clear view of his assailant, who had jumped out of the car and was trying to pull the driver’s door open, smashing the window with the hammer. Dazed and bleeding heavily, Mr Tomey managed drive away, but he did give a full description to police. Again, the case remains unsolved and was never considered a Ripper crime, although one detective tried to bring the case to the Ripper squad’s attention and was rebuffed ‘because the Ripper only attacked women’. According to their official version, he would not start his attacks for another eight years. But the police know their authorised version of history is wrong. Their own files show the Ripper attacked a prostitute in August 1969. Sutcliffe was on one of his regular trawls of Bradford’s red light district with his friend Trevor Birdsall when they saw a woman staggering drunkenly along the pavement. Investigators searched for clues as the wave of unsolved killings continued and several bits of evidence were ignored Sutcliffe suddenly got out of the vehicle and returned ten minutes later, telling Birdsall he had followed ‘an old cow’ to a house and hit her on the back of the head with a stone stuffed into a sock.

The woman survived to tell police the registration plate of Birdsall’s van. Sutcliffe admitted hitting the woman in a drunken argument, but the victim, fearful her husband would discover she was working as a prostitute, declined to press charges. Sutcliffe accepted a police caution. The following month he was arrested in the red light district with a knife and a ball-peen hammer after a beat bobby spotted him crouched down in his old Morris Minor. He was arrested and fined for going equipped to steal. No connection was made with his caution for attacking a prostitute. Meanwhile, the wave of unsolved killings continued. They have a sickening similarity, but police communication was so poor that no one even realised a serial killer was on the loose. On Saturday, March 14, 1970, a Cheshire farmer stumbled across the body of Jacqueline ‘Jackie’ Ansell-Lamb, an 18-year-old legal secretary who shared a flat with her best friend in Manchester. Jackie had been in London for a party the previous weekend and was last seen hitch-hiking back up the M1. Her body bore evidence of both sexual assault and battering to the back of the head.

The clear cause of death was strangulation with a strand of knotted rope. Revealingly, the killer had posed her dead body. Crime scene staging is present in just one per cent of homicides and forms a distinctive signature – indeed, it was a hallmark of the Yorkshire Ripper, who frequently killed and mutilated his victims, often face-down. He then dragged them to their final resting place, where he would typically, though not always, turn them over and arrange their clothing to display their breasts and his frenzied stabbing of the abdomen and groin. Sometimes his victims were covered, on other occasions their clothes were placed nearby. Despite a huge police inquiry, Jackie’s killer was never found. Sutcliffe entering Dewsbury Magistrates Court under a blanket surrounded by police By September 1970, Sutcliffe’s fiancee Sonia had enrolled at a teacher-training college in London and Sutcliffe drove down to see her most weekends. Barbara Mayo was a 24-year-old trainee teacher living with her boyfriend in Shepherd’s Bush, West London. On October 12, she set out to hitch-hike up the M1 to Catterick to collect her car.

Six days later her body was discovered in woods in Derbyshire. She was face-down, with her clothing in disarray and her jacket spread over her. She had been beaten about the head and strangled with a ligature. A DNA sample, presumably semen, was found on her clothing –another common part of the Ripper MO. Barbara Mayo’s murder has never been solved. The near-naked body of Gloria Booth was discovered at 8am on Sunday, June 13, 1971, in brambles on a recreation ground in Ruislip, West London. She had been viciously attacked. A post-mortem suggested she had been lying face-down for at least half an hour after she was hit over the head, garotted and mutilated. Then her body was posed: her bra and blouse had been pushed up to reveal her breasts and she had several nasty-looking wounds to the abdomen – evidence that the crime was far from a ‘typical’ rape. Sutcliffe used a knotted garotte on his last two ‘official’ victims and was carrying a 3ft length of knotted nylon rope when he was finally caught in January 1981.

Police have known for more than 30 years that the Ripper may have struck many more times. Scandalously, the cases have not been re-opened. The families of the men and women he killed and the unacknowledged survivors have been shamefully ignored to preserve the blushes of West Yorkshire Police The partial removal of Gloria’s clothing was similar to the staging noted in all of the murders for which Sutcliffe was eventually convicted. The mutilation of her pubic region had a strong parallel with several acknowledged murders. And police discovered distinctive bite marks as found in at least one other murder – made by a man with the same gap in his front teeth as Sutcliffe. In all, the murder of Gloria Booth showed eight of the 11 often-seen characteristics of the Ripper’s MO, more than any of the murders he admitted. The uncanny parallels between the deaths of Gloria Booth, Jackie Ansell-Lamb and Barbara Mayo and the known victims of the Yorkshire Ripper are far more than a coincidence. Individually, the aspects of the Ripper’s MO are rare; together, they make it extremely unlikely that the killer was anyone else than Sutcliffe. Yet all remain unsolved.

The murders form just a small part of a disturbing catalogue of 30 unsolved cases that show distinct and unusual hallmarks of the Ripper. Indeed, the correlation is as extraordinary as it is obvious. In 22 cases, a ball-peen hammer or similar object was used on the back of the head, ten were stabbed, eight were throttled with a ligature, 15 were stripped, ten cases were posed, and in ten cases the body was moved – although in a further 11 cases the Ripper was disturbed. Sutcliffe’s unacknowledged crimes across the country range from 1966 to 1980, just before his arrest. Fourteen of his crimes came before the first ‘official’ Ripper attack in the summer of 1975. Few, as the Ripper police insisted, were prostitutes. Two were men. Police have known for more than 30 years that the Ripper may have struck many more times. Scandalously, the cases have not been re-opened. The families of the men and women he killed and the unacknowledged survivors have been shamefully ignored to preserve the blushes of West Yorkshire Police.

It is time for Peter William Sutcliffe to face prosecution for the full catalogue of his crimes. Only then will all the ghosts of the Yorkshire Ripper finally be laid to rest. From Yorkshire Ripper: The Secret Murders, by Chris Clark and Tim Tate, published by John Blake Publishing on June 29, priced £17.99. It is available for £13.49 with free p&p from until July 5. Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe set to leave Broadmoor after 31 years | Daily Mail Online Share 576 shares He told The Sun : 'I can’t believe they let him stay in Broadmoor for so long.' A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: ‘Decisions over whether prisoners are to be sent back to prison from secure hospitals are based on clinical assessments made by independent medical staff. ‘The High Court ordered in 2009 that Sutcliffe should never be released. This was then upheld by the Court of Appeal.

Our thoughts are with Sutcliffe’s victims and their families.’ According to The Sun, the serial killer is not happy to be leaving the more relaxed setting of the hospital - telling a friend, ‘it’s a disaster’ - and is said to be on suicide watch after learning he could be moved. His home: Sutcliffe has been in Broadmoor (pictured), a high-security psychiatric hospital in Berkshire, since 1984 after being sentenced to concurrent life terms for murdering 13 women Inside Broadmoor: Sutcliffe has a Freeview TV and a DVD player in his room at the psychiatric hospital (above) Former boxer Frank Bruno, right, pictured at Broadmoor in 1991 shaking hands with Peter Sutcliffe as Jimmy Savile stands in the background. Mr Bruno has said he was tricked into shaking hands with the murderer Dr Kevin Murray, a psychiatrist who had been in charge of Sutcliffe’s care, said in a 2006 report that he posed a ‘low risk of reoffending’. Two years ago Tony Maden, the former head of the dangerous severe personality disorder unit at Broadmoor, said patients such as Sutcliffe should be returned to prison.

Professor Maden, professor of forensic psychiatry at Imperial College London, said: ‘We are far too ready to keep mentally disordered prisoners in places like Broadmoor indefinitely, particularly if they are famous. ‘I think it’s about celebrity, I can’t think of any other reason why a hospital would want to hang on to somebody when essentially the condition is stable.’ The news comes after it emerged that Sutcliffe may change his name so no-one can desecrate his grave. West London Mental Health NHS Trust, which runs Broadmoor, said it could not comment. Victim's relative: Author Richard McCann (left) - the son of Sutcliffe’s first victim, Wilma McCann (right), who was killed in 1975 when he was five - said that where Sutcliffe is 'locked up does not really change anything' Investigation: Police search at the murder scene of Barbara Leach, a victim of Sutcliffe, in Bradford in 1979 It costs taxpayers more than £300,000 a year to detain him in Broadmoor, at least five times the cost of a prison cell.

Sutcliffe has been in Broadmoor for more than three decades after he was given 20 life sentences in 1981. As well as the 13 women he killed, he tried to murder seven more in a five-year spree. He used weapons including a hammer, screwdriver and knives to mutilate women across the north of England. Dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper, Sutcliffe believed he was on a ‘mission from God’ to kill sex workers. Since Sutcliffe's conviction, various reports have indicated he may have killed many more women than those whose deaths featured in the 1981 trial. The case remains one of the most notorious of the last 100 years and the assessment of what went wrong in the investigation is still having an impact on major police inquiries to this day. THE YORKSHIRE RIPPER'S REIGN OF TERROR: A TIMELINE OF HIS MURDERS Sutcliffe, who lived in Bradford, West Yorkshire, believed he was on a 'mission from God' to kill prostitutes, although not all his victims were.

His other victims, aged between 16 and 47, included two university students, a civil servant, a bank clerk and a supermarket worker. Sutcliffe was dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper because he mutilated his victims using a screw driver, hammer and knife. He was also convicted of seven counts of attempted murder in and around Yorkshire, Lancashire and Greater Manchester. Murdered: Twelve of the 13 victims killed by the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe between 1975 and 1980 Timeline: Summer 1975: Peter Sutcliffe begins attacking women, two in Keighley and one in Halifax. All three survive and police do not link the attacks. 30 October 1975: Sutcliffe carries out his first fatal attack on Wilma McCann, a 28-year-old prostitute from the Chapeltown district of Leeds. 20 January 1976: He murders Emily Jackson, 42, from Leeds, battering her with a hammer and stabbing her with a screwdriver. 5 February 1977: He kills Irene Richardson, 28, another prostitute from Leeds.

23 April 1977: Sutcliffe strikes for the first time in his home town of Bradford, murdering 32-year-old Patricia Atkinson. 26 June 1977: The case comes to the attention of the national press after Sutcliffe murders Jayne MacDonald, a 16-year-old shop assistant. The murder, and the realisation that a serial killer is on the loose in Yorkshire, shocks the country. The attacker is dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper by the press, and West Yorkshire Chief Constable Ronald Gregory appoints his most senior detective, Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield, to investigate the murders. 1 October 1977: Sutcliffe chooses Manchester for his next attack - on Jean Jordan, 20. He dumps her body on an allotment and throws her bag, containing a brand new £5 note he gave her, into nearby shrubs. Police find the bag and trace the serial number on the note back to the payroll of Yorkshire hauliers T and W H Clark, who employ Peter Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe is interviewed by police but provides an alibi placing him at a party.

21 January to 16 May 1978: Sutcliffe murders three prostitutes - Yvonne Pearson, 21, from Bradford; Helen Rytka, 18, from Huddersfield, and 40-year-old Vera Millward from Manchester. 4 April 1979: Sutcliffe kills Halifax Building Society clerk Josephine Whitaker, 19. June 1979: A tape is sent to police by a man calling himself Jack the Ripper, who has already sent a series of hand-written letters from Sunderland. Assistant Chief Constable Oldfield mistakenly decides that these are the work of the Ripper. Wearside Jack, as he becomes known, is pinpointed to the Castletown district of Sunderland by voice experts. Detectives are told they can discount suspects who do not have a Wearside accent. July 1979: Police interview Sutcliffe for the fifth time. Detective Constables Andrew Laptew and Graham Greenwood are suspicious but their report is filed because his voice and handwriting do not fit the letters and tape. 2 September 1979: Sutcliffe murders Barbara Leach, 20, in Bradford.

2 October 1979: A £1million campaign is launched to catch the Yorkshire Ripper. 20 August 1980: The Ripper claims another victim, Marguerite Walls, 47, from Leeds, followed by Jacqueline Hill, 20, a Leeds University student, on November 17. November 1980: Detective Chief Superintendent James Hobson replaces Oldfield. Hobson downgrades the importance of the Wearside Jack tape and letters. 3 January 1981: Sutcliffe admits he is the Yorkshire Ripper after police arrest him with a prostitute. Police admit the killer does not have a Wearside accent. 22 May 1981: Sutcliffe is jailed for life at the Old Bailey. The judge recommends a minimum sentence of 30 years. He is transferred to Broadmoor secure hospital in Berkshire in 1984. 24 May 1989: Wife of Sutcliffe wins damages. 21 March 2006: John Humble, a former builder, is sentenced to eight years in prison after he admits to being the Yorkshire Ripper hoaxer known as Wearside Jack.

1 June 2006: A report which has been kept secret for nearly 25 years reveals that Sutcliffe probably committed more crimes than the 13 murders and seven attempted murders for which he was convicted. Read more: Yorkshire Ripper British Police Files Yorkshire Ripper British Police Files 326 pages of British Police and British Government files concerning the Yorkshire Ripper case, archived on CD-ROM. The Yorkshire Ripper case was one of the largest police investigations in the history of England. During 1969 an otherwise unremarkable young man named Peter William Sutcliffe came to the notice of the police on two occasions in connection with incidents involving prostitutes. Sutcliffe, who at that time was 23 years of age, was a native of Shipley, West Yorkshire and lived there with his parents. He was not notably abnormal, although he had gained a reputation for a rather macabre sense of humor whilst employed as a grave digger at Bingley. During his late teens he developed an unhealthy interest in prostitutes and spent a great deal of time, often in the company of his friend Trevor Birdsall, watching them soliciting on the streets of Leeds and Bradford.

There is no evidence that he used the services of prostitutes at that stage although it is clear that he was fascinated by them and spent a considerable amount of time acting as a kind of voyeur. It is apparent that at some point during 1969, Sutcliffe's interest in prostitutes attained a new dimension with a desire on his part to inflict physical injury upon them. Although the police files on two incidents involving Sutcliffe during that year were destroyed some time ago as part of a perfectly legitimate "weeding" process there is no doubt that on one occasion Sutcliffe attacked a prostitute in Bradford with a cosh consisting of a large stone inside a man's sock. He had left Birdsall in his car before the incident and told him about what had happened when he returned. Surprisingly he was not charged with any offence. During the same year Sutcliffe was arrested in a prostitute area in Bradford whilst in possession of a hammer. He was not suspected by the police of having the hammer for the purpose of inflicting violence to the person and the meager police records remaining show that he was subsequently charged with "going equipped for stealing".

At the time of these attacks Sutcliffe was courting Sonia Szurma whom he was to marry in 1974. Sutcliffe was born at Shipley, West Yorkshire, on 2nd June 1946. After leaving school at the age of 15, he had a variety of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs in the Bradford area. During the period in which his admitted crimes were committed he was employed as a tire fitter, and subsequently, following qualification as a heavy goods vehicle driver, as a truck driver for the Bradford engineering and transport company, T. & W.H. Clark (Holdings) Ltd. On the 10th April 1974 he married Sonia Szurma with whom he then lived, first at her parents house in Clayton and later, from the 26th September 1977, in a detached house which he bought in the Heaton district of Bradford. At the time of his marriage Sutcliffe owned a lime green Ford Capri car with the registered number EUA 83IK.

The first of the crimes for which Sutcliffe was convicted was the attempted murder of Anna Rogulskyj in Keighley on the 5th July 1975. Sutcliffe attacked his victim with a hammer in an alleyway in Keighley and left her lying on the ground suffering from very severe head injuries and from a number of superficial slash wounds to the body. The crime was not linked with any others neither was it linked with the Ripper series until June 1978 when the West Yorkshire Police issued a "Special Notice" to all police forces about the murders which had, by then, been\ committed. On the 15th August 1975, just over a month after the Rogulskyj incident, Sutcliffe, after leaving his friend Trevor Birdsall in his car, attacked Olive Smelt with a hammer in Boothtown, Halifax, inflicting serious head injuries. Using a knife he also inflicted two slash wounds to her back after first disarranging her clothing.

Although the nature of the crime was very similar to the attempted murder of Anna Rogulskyj it was not specifically linked with it in police crime circulations, neither was it linked with the Ripper series until June 1978. In neither of these two crimes was any substantial evidence available about either the assailants or about any vehicle which might have been used. The first murder in the series occurred on the 30th October 1975 when Sutcliffe killed Wilma McCann, a known prostitute, on the Prince Philip playing fields in Leeds. Once again, the victim was hit on the head with a hammer, one of the blows penetrating the full thickness of the skull. On this occasion, however, unlike the tentative slashings of the bodies of Rogulskyj and Smelt, McCann was stabbed once in the neck and 14 times in the chest and abdomen. In what was to become a standard Ripper trademark, McCann's clothing had been disturbed so that before the stab wounds were inflicted the whole of her torso was displayed.

The opinion of the pathologist was that the victim had been struck with the hammer whilst in a standing position and that the subsequent injuries were inflicted as she lay disabled and unconscious on the ground. This too was to become part of Sutcliffe's standard method of operation. Sutcliffe would eventually be convicted of attacking 17 more women, killing 12, that took place over the next 5 years. On 2nd January 1981 Sutcliffe was seen by the police whilst in the company of a prostitute in the "red light" area of Sheffield. He was arrested for an offence of theft of car number plates, detected because a check with the Police National Computer indicated that his vehicle did not match the vehicle to which the number plates displayed on it were allocated. Some 24 hours after his arrest the arresting officer, having been advised to consider the possibility that Sutcliffe might have connections with the Ripper crimes, returned to the scene of the arrest and there recovered a hammer and knife which Sutcliffe had disposed of whilst allegedly urinating nearby. An additional knife was later recovered from the cistern of a toilet in Hammerton Road Police Station where Sutcliffe had hidden it following his arrest.

From that point onwards, although on the basis of his record card in the Millgarth incident room it might still have been possible for him to have been eliminated on accent and handwriting grounds, the finding of the hammer and the two knives prompted members of the West Yorkshire inquiry team into thinking that Sutcliffe was the man they were looking for. Thereafter he soon began to admit the crimes with which he was subsequently charged and gave a detailed statement to the interviewing officers. On Friday, 22nd May 1981, Peter William Sutcliffe was convicted at the Central Criminal Court of 13 cases of murder and 7 cases of attempted murder and sentenced to 20 concurrent terms of life imprisonment, with a recommendation that he should serve a minimum of 30 years. Despite being found sane at his trial, he was soon diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia. Attempts to send him to a secure psychiatric unit were initially blocked. In 1984 Sutcliffe was finally sent to Broadmoor hospital, under Section 47 of the Mental Health Act 1983. HOME OFFICE FILES 147 pages of Home Office files from 1980.

Contains notes concerning changes made in the Ripper Team, errors made in the investigation, and a review of the "handbag" investigation. THE YORKSHIRE RIPPER CASE REVIEW OF THE POLICE INVESTIGATION OF THE CASE BY LAWRENCE BYFORD, Esq., CBE., QPM., HER MAJESTY'S INSPECTOR OF CONSTABULARY A 154 page report commonly known as the Byford Report. On June 1, 2006 the UK Home Office released Inspector of Constabulary, Sir Lawrence Byford's 1981 report of an official inquiry into the Ripper case. Part of the document entitled "Description of suspects, photofits and other assaults" remains censored by the Home Office.

Referring to the period between 1969 - when Sutcliffe first came to the attention of police - and 1975, the year of the murder of Wilma McCann, the report states: "There is a curious and unexplained lull in Sutcliffe's criminal activities and there is the possibility that he carried out other attacks on prostitutes and unaccompanied women during that period." In 1969 Sutcliffe, described in the Byford report as an "otherwise unremarkable young man", came to the notice of police on two occasions in connection with incidents involving prostitutes. The report said that it was clear he had on at least one occasion attacked a Bradford prostitute with a cosh. Also in 1969 he was arrested in the red light district of the city in possession of a hammer. However, rather than believing Sutcliffe might use the hammer as an offensive weapon, the arresting officers assumed he was a burglar and he was charged with "going equipped for stealing." Sir Lawrence's report states: "We feel it is highly improbable that the crimes in respect of which Sutcliffe has been charged and convicted are the only ones attributable to him.

This feeling is reinforced by examining the details of a number of assaults on women since 1969 which, in some ways, clearly fall into the established pattern of Sutcliffe's overall modus-operandi. I hasten to add that I feel sure that the senior police officers in the areas concerned are also mindful of this possibility but, in order to ensure full account is taken of all the information available, I have arranged for an effective liaison to take place." Police identified a number of attacks which matched Sutcliffe's modus operandi and tried to question the killer, but he was never charged with other crimes. The Byford report's major findings were contained in a summary published by the then home secretary, William Whitelaw, but this is the first time precise details of the bungled police investigation have been disclosed. Sir Lawrence described delays in following up vital tip-offs from Trevor Birdsall, an associate of Sutcliffe's since 1966. On November 25 1980, Birdsall sent an anonymous letter to police, the text of which ran as follows: "I have good reason to now [sic] the man you are looking for in the Ripper case.

This man as [sic] dealings with prostitutes and always had a thing about them... His name and address is Peter Sutcliffe, 6 Garden Lane, Heaton, Bradford. Workes [sic] for Clarkes Transport, Shipley." This letter was marked "Priority No 1". An index card was created on the basis of the letter and a policewoman found Sutcliffe already had three existing index cards in the records. But "for some inexplicable reason", said the Byford report, the papers remained in a filing tray in the incident room until the murderer's arrest on January 2 the following year. Birdsall visited Bradford police station the day after sending the letter to repeat his misgivings about Sutcliffe; he added the information that he had been with Sutcliffe when Sutcliffe got out of a car to pursue a woman with whom he had had a bar room dispute in Halifax on August 16, 1975. This was the date and place of the Olive Smelt attack. A report compiled on this visit was lost, despite a "comprehensive search" which took place after Sutcliffe's arrest, according to the report.

Sir Lawrence said: "The failure to take advantage of Birdsall's anonymous letter and his visit to the police station was yet again a stark illustration of the progressive decline in the overall efficiency of the major incident room. It resulted in Sutcliffe being at liberty for more than a month when he might conceivably have been in custody. Thankfully, there is no reason to think he committed any further murderous assaults within that period. The report covers: Creation of a Major Incident Room. The Cross Area Sighting Inquiry. The Tyre (Tire) Marks and Vehicle Tracking Inquiry. The Letters and Tape Inquiry. The Police Interviews involving Sutcliffe. Media Relations. Lack of Computerisation of Records. Management of "series crimes". BRITISH PRIME MINISTER CABINET OFFICE PAPERS 25 pages of British Prime Minister Cabinet Office papers dating from 1980 to 1984, concerning the Yorkshire Ripper case. A 10 Downing Street Memo notes Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's displeasure of the lack of progress in the case. Includes a summary of the findings in the Bradford Report.

HOME OFFICE REPORTS In addition to the material above on the disc are two Home Office Reports, The Effective Use of the Media in Serious Crime Investigations, and Reviewing Murder Investigations: An Analysis of Progress Reviews From Six Police Forces. The disc contains a text transcript of all recognizable text embedded into the graphic image of each page of each document, creating a searchable finding aid. Text searches can be done across all files on the disc

Question: What is the real name of the Yorkshire Ripper, convicted in 1981 of the murder of 13 people?
Answer: Peter Sutcliffe